Conversations with my son
I’ve been going through some old papers and trying to get rid of a lot of them.
Sometimes I even succeed in throwing something out. But some things need saving. Sometimes I come across notes I made about incidents I’d completely forgotten—which can include little anecdotes about my son when he was a toddler.
Here’s one that happened when he was 3 1/2 years old. We’d been looking at the pictures in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, and the conversation began with a comment by my son about one of the Tenniel drawings in the book:
He: That’s old-fashioned.
Me: The man who did it lived long ago, so he didn’t think it was old-fashioned.
He: And we live in this time so we don’t think it’s old-fashioned.
Me: But 200 years from now, people will think our times are old-fashioned.
He: But they won’t think their times are, but people after them will.
Now, you may not believe this dialogue ever occurred. But I can assure you I didn’t make it up, and I labeled it with his age. He was a challenging child, and very very interested in numbers and time.
Here’s another one, from when he was somewhere around 4 or 5 years old. It occurred during a period when there was some trouble in my marriage, which I’d never spoken of to my son but which he’d probably picked up on:
He: How does it feel to be a grownup?
Me: [Pause] Well, that’s hard to say. It’s hard to describe in words. Anyway, it’s different for everyone. I guess it’s just something that has to be lived.
He: But what’s it like for you?
Me: [pause] It’s hard to say in words.
He: Try.
Me: Well, some parts are good, some parts not so good.
He: Tell me about the not so good parts.
Me: I just can’t describe it in words.
He: [joking] Why don’t you describe it in birds?
That one doesn’t seem possible, either. But there it is on paper, and in fact it’s very consistent with the personality of my son. Whom I love very, very dearly.
In words and in birds.
That’s wild. Where is he know — what’s he doing?
G
Thanks for sharing those wonderful ancedotes. I picture a not only a challenging (in a positive way) child, but a little charmer too.
You’re reminding me of a conversation I had with my dear daughter Rori, age maybe 3 or 4, that I’ll never forget. It began when I proposed,
MJR: Let’s play opposites!
Play-by-play now . . .
MJR: UP
RGR: DOWN
MJR: IN
RGR: OUT
MJR: OVER
RGR: UNDER
MJR: HOT
RGR: BLOW ON IT!
“Why don’t you describe it in birds?” is clever and adorable and sounds like a child who had Alice In Wonderland read aloud to him. Tennial could have illustrated the word birds very nicely.
One of the nicest things my youngest daughter ever said to me was when she came home from taking the SATs – and she didn’t say very many nice things at that age! I asked her how the testing went. “I didn’t know I knew so much, especially on the Verbal.” She paused, thinking, then looked me in the eye and said, “Thank you for reading to me when I was little.”
George:
He’s an adventurous sort; likes travel and the outdoors. Has a lot of education and degrees, and is now using his logic and math skills consulting in the business world.
Weren’t your prescient to save the notes? We all have our memories, some of which are accurate; but, much is lost.
My wife keeps copious notes about clever acts by, and relationships with, grand children. She does it for her own pleasure, but it also documents their lives to some extent. Others are not so diligent, and so much will be forgotten.
Over the past couple of years, I have written family histories, which included facts, observations, and lore that was passed down, so that my grand children will have a sense of whence they came. I hope they will preserve and extend these. So much is lost if the efforr to document and preserve is not pursued.
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/sep/26/sylvanian-families-isis-freedom-of-expression-exhibition
Speaking of art and innocence, this now banned London exhibit commingled those themes with the harshest elements of current reality. Interestingly, by shutting the exhibit down, British authorities contributed an additional thought-provoking dimension.
Who we are today and how we perceive and deal with the intentions of our enemy has become the greatest challenge to our existence that we have ever faced. The most daunting part of our test at present is the question of whether we have the will to even acknowledge and identify the enemy.
If the recent controversy over Ben Carson’s comments is an indication, the mainstream elites are not yet up to it. So entrenched are they in denial, it appears they may never be.
In birds, we have eggs, and when they hatch, we will care for the hatchlings and so on until they fly the nest.
So many children see so much life with the clarity of a genius. Are children even capable of making uninteresting art?
And then, mostly, the insight and natural creativity goes away. Vocabulary is a sign.
A lot depends on how much of the clarity any given person can hang on to.
But a truly wonderful thing in life is that older people (mostly) “know” more than younger people giving life a useful, puzzling unity.
Sweet.
Lovely, thank you!
When my honorary nephew Nick was about 5, he said to his mom, “So, God is married to Nature, right?”
A blessing to read. Thank you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statue_of_Edward_Snowden
This is pretty hilarious, off topic.
When my honorary nephew Nick was about 5, he said to his mom, “So, God is married to Nature, right?”
If Divine entity came from the “waters”, then it probably is.
Wonderful stories. You were prescient to have written them down. They show that conversation with an adult is a very important teaching tool for a child- independent exploration is also important- and that the most important teacher for a child is the parent.
Which reminds me of the failure, or perhaps better said non-success, of the Head Start program. The basic idea behind Head Start was that as poverty-level parents with deficient vocabularies would produce children with deficient vocabularies, interaction with teachers with rich vocabularies would result in children with richer vocabularies.
Unfortunately, a half century of data has shown that whatever advantage Head Start children had by first grade, the advantage had disappeared by third grade.
I suspect that a primary reason for that non-success of Head Start is that Head Start is that many of the Head Start “teachers” hired for the program were poverty level parents of those Head Start children. Result: vocabulary deficient teachers teaching vocabulary deficient children. Why should we be surprised at the results?
But as Head Start became a ‘”Jobs for the Boys” program- though it would here be better described as a “Jobs for the Gals” program- the momentum continued.
I have vague memories of many “what if” questions directed at my father often to the extent that he would finally get exasperated by my barrage of “what if” questions. My vague recollection of these is that my father was a VERY patient sort, and that it took a lot of prodding to get him exasperated. And as I continued to have many “what if” sessions with my father, his occasional expressions of exasperation didn’t upset me.
Choc – lick.
Hide and Go Sneak.
Those were the days…
My eldest son was about 8, and we were driving home. He asked for a candy bar, and I promised him one at the 7/11. As we approached said establishment, he suddenly said: “I have a question.” “Sure, go ahead.” “How big is the universe?” “Before you answer, I have another question.” “OK, shoot.” “Why is there evil in the world.”
Well, I studied physics, so I had a guess at the first one. But, for the other one, I referred him to Gary, who owned the 7/11, and so probably knew more about the world than I did. Unfortunately, it turned out that Gary didn’t know either. Alas.
I have two small steamer like trunks filled with paintings, drawings, school papers, birthday party paraphernalia etc. from my kids’ early days before pre-school through elementary school. They’ll find the stuff some day when they have to clean out my house after I’m gone. Hopefully, they will stop and talk for hours over it.
God knows I love my three children.
wGraves:
You’re making me think my son was temporarily out on loan to you. That’s exactly the sort of thing I used to get hit with.
One of the stories I thought to put in this post but didn’t is when my son, at 2 years 9 months (and while riding in the car) asked me (and this is verbatim): “Where do the numbers end?”
I thought it not only profound, but poetic.
I gave him the answer—“they don’t end, because any number you can think of you just add one and you have a bigger number”—and he accepted it and seemed satisfied with that answer.
great memories, it all goes by too fast !